English

Saari's Homographic Conjecture of the Three-Body Problem

Mathematical Physics 2009-09-29 v1 math.MP

Abstract

Saari's homographic conjecture, which extends a classical statement proposed by Donald Saari in 1970, claims that solutions of the Newtonian nn-body problem with constant configurational measure are homographic. In other words, if the mutual distances satisfy a certain relationship, the configuration of the particle system may change size and position but not shape. We prove this conjecture for large sets of initial conditions in three-body problems given by homogeneous potentials, including the Newtonian one. Some of our results are true for n3n\ge 3.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0909.4991,
  title  = {Saari's Homographic Conjecture of the Three-Body Problem},
  author = {Florin Diacu and Toshiaki Fujiwara and Ernesto Perez-Chavela and Manuele Santoprete},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0909.4991},
  year   = {2009}
}